Music Videos

Julian Philipp David - Traurige Kids

One guy - three names. This is how people tend to describe Julian Philipp David. The 25-year-old bucked the trend of many musicians and decided, at the beginning of his career, not to take on a flashy stage name. Instead this guy from Mannheim settled plain and simply on the three names that his parents gave him at his birth: Julian, Philipp and David.

Raised in a small village near Freiburg, Julian discovered his love for music at a very young age. He was in a music club, played in a jazz orchestra and started his first band before he went to the Pop Academy in Mannheim in 2012 to start his music degree.

His passion was always German hip hop: “I was in fact a bit late, as all the albums came out around the aughts,” Julian said, “To make up for lost time I listened to virtually nothing else.”

Rap and hip hop accompany Julian still to this day - but he’s not limited to these genres. When asked how he would describe his own music, at one point the phrase “songwriter-rap” slipped out of Julian’s mouth. What was more or less an accidental uttering ended up accurately describing the core of his music: guitar sounds and rap, singing and lyrical finesse, for Julian genre boundaries are fluid. And, even as a hip hop fan, he isn’t afraid of pop music.

During his studies in Mannheim Julian recorded an EP (Extended Play album) with his band “Tonomat 3000,” played at concerts and festivals, opening for stars such as Max Herre or Marteria. After his band dissolved three years later Julian decided to make a go of a solo career and recorded new songs for his own EP as “Julian Philipp David.” Soon thereafter his first album, “Autumn,” was released.

Songwriting is what gives Julian strength. He says: “I believe that every person needs their own small secret hideout in which they can crawl when everything is just too much. For me, since I can think my secret hideout has been music and writing lyrics. Whatever I’m otherwise not able to articulate I’m able to make sense of and let loose with in songs.”